MANILA, Philippines - When B.S. Computer Engineering student Suzzane Irasga fell into debt with regards to her tuition last year, she came up with an awesome idea to earn money while having fun.

This young gamer earns money by playing video games.
PHOTO CREDIT: Facebook/Suzanne Irasga

Suzzane was put in the difficult situation after her mother started developing Hepatitis B. Although her father has work, he also has to support her and her three other siblings. In order to help, Suzzane stepped up and tried almost everything such as sewing and tutoring just to earn cash. But her earnings from these jobs weren’t even enough to cover for her allowance.

A videogame enthusiast, Suzzane was able to pay for her tuition and earn enough money to pay for her books and other miscellaneous fees by playing video games and live-streaming it on Twitch.tv, an online gaming community TV hub. In fact, she was able to raise for her tuition fee amounting to P33,385 in a matter of 7 days.

So how exactly does this live-streaming work and how do gamers earn money from it?

Being a League of Legends gamer, Suzzane definitely has a future in store for her as the game attracts 80,000 to 100,000 viewers at any given time of the day on Twitch.tv. But initially, Suzzane didn’t have the resources to support her endeavour.

In order to stream properly, a gamer needs to have an average upload speed 5 megabits per second which means spending P3,000 on Fiber internet monthly. With the help of a local gaming community called Rumble Royale, Suzzane was able to avail of the internet subscription and start her career as a streamer.

Balancing her studies and her streaming and gaming career, Suzzane put up a weekly schedule for her streams and took the opportunity to spend a few hours streaming her games either before her classes or just after they’ve done traveling to the Rumble Royale HQ. The young gamer even had to endure monstrous traffic jams around the metro in order to go live for her fans.

Her strenuos streaming sessions soon paid off and Suzzane also known as Suzzysaur in the online world remains committed as one of the local figureheads of League of Legends.

With a successful academic and streaming career, Suzzane says she’s living her dream life.